Entrust Inc., a Dallas-based digital identity vendor, will provide its public key infrastructure to the Taiwanese government to help authenticate biometric information stored on e-passports.

Taiwan will begin offering the new e-passports to its 23 million citizens by the end of 2008. The validity of the information stored on the chip will be ensured using PKI from Entrust Authority Security Manager. Entrust provides e-passport security for the U.S., U.K., Slovenia, Singapore, New Zealand and now Taiwan.

“The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,” says Poh-Chuan Tan, public sector director of HP Asia Pacific and Japan. “We are excited to be enabling the implementation of biometric e-passports in Taiwan to help increase border security without adding to traveler waiting times.